A quarterly newsletter from the Botany Dept (NMNH) and the U.S. National Herbarium.

03/21/2019

Ida Lopez came to the Smithsonian in June 1998 as a Museum Specialist to work with me to develop the Zingiberales and Monocot Research Program in Botany. I could tell immediately when I first met her that our partnership in pursuing science, collection development, and running the day-to-day operations of the lab had the potential to be a long-term interaction. Now, twenty years later, my first impression has proven correct. Congratulations, Ida, on a tremendously successful career.

I do not think Ida knew much about Museum Collections when she arrived, but the enthusiasm and welcoming spirit of the Collections Management Team in Botany quickly solved that problem and she became a specimen devotee. This was not only true concerning herbarium specimens, but also the development of our extensive and important living collection in the Botany Greenhouses. Over the years the improved care and maintenance of both living and preserved specimens became one of her prime concerns. And the devotion she has shown towards our living collections, not only the Zingiberales, but all of our research specimens, especially over the last several years with the lack of adequate greenhouse management, has been beyond the call of duty. All of us in the Department thank her for her efforts.

With regards to research, Ida has been instrumental in most if not all of the hundreds of papers and books that have been published through our lab during her tenure. Not only has she been a co-author on a number of those papers, but her keen eye for effective and clear figures and illustrations was unsurpassed. The book I published with Ted Fleming on the “Ornaments of Life” (University of Chicago Press) is loaded with Ida’s handiwork and our opus on “Methods and Protocols of DNA Barcoding” (Humana Press/Springer) could not have been done without her contributions.

Whenever I came back from a field trip that was focused on pollination of Heliconia in the Caribbean or searching for new gingers in Southeast Asia, I realized that Ida also needed that kind of field experience to help her manage all the other aspects of the lab. So off we went to Dominica to build an experimental shade house for breeding system studies in Heliconia, and off we went to Myanmar to work with the Forestry Department, and off we went to Yunnan, China, to collect gingers. I was right: her excellent assistance in the field provided a much better background for coordinating our research activities at home. Time to go back to the field, huh, Ida?!?

In addition to those full-time activities in research and collections, Ida managed the lab and all the lab workers within. Not only did she manage the funds for our research grants, both internal and external, but she also initiated the contracts and placed all the orders. Probably most important was the wonderful care that she provided for the scholarly visitors, the interns, the post-docs, the students, and all the other colleagues who passed through the lab. It was an unending stream of personalities. Probably one of her most rewarding activities was mentoring young scientists through the YES Program at NMNH and through local high schools. I thank her for all of these interactions that made the lab so rich and vibrant.

This short summary of Ida’s time at the Smithsonian is starting to sound like a “career performance appraisal” for Ida. However, performance appraisals really do not always get to the core of one’s contributions to the museum and to science. Ida was deeply committed to learning about and participating in natural history science. And I think she made our lab exceptional in that way because everyone who came to the lab learned to share that commitment. Our scholarly activities were a success because to her. Thanks, Ida. Yes, thanks so much.

03/18/2019

Karen Adey, producer and executive producer of more than a hundred Smithsonian films, passed away on December 29, 2018. Wife of Research Botanist Emeritus, Walter Adey, she has spent the past 20 years managing and accompanying research cruises aboard the Adey research vessel Alca i in the North Atlantic. Adey worked closely with her husband on directing underwater videos and on the research and development of new water cleaning technology. Early in her career, she founded the Smithsonian’s Motion Picture Unit in 1969, and in the 1980s, she was the Deputy Director of Smithsonian Productions, a now shuttered film, video, and radio unit. Her productions won 5 Emmy Awards and more than 70 national and international honors.

03/12/2019

“It was a good story while it lasted,” he chortled while shuffling the lichen Type folders back into their cabinet shelf. From the cabinet marked “SAG - SAZ,” and no sight of the elusive Santessonia. He tapped the folders back in place, assumed a posture of momentary reflection, and ushered us to his office. The story began after lunch as Harold Robinson, of bryophyte, cryptogram, Diptera, and Asteraceae fame, regaled the tale of Mason Hale’s eminent discovery of the highly unusual lichen, Santessonia namibensis, the first of its kind. Hale was a prominent lichenologist, George Llano’s successor at the Smithsonian Institution, and made major contributions to taxonomy, in particular to Parmeliaceae. Well-traveled and a remarkable linguist, able to read and write in Japanese, Finnish, and Tamil for starters, he once even corrected Robinson’s grammar along with another notable linguist George Steyskal, explaining that the origin of the article “a” is the abbreviated form of “an.”

Well into his career studying lichens, Hale was on a trip to Namibia collecting in the desert amongst the obscure welwitschia plants, two leaves extending endlessly into the landscape of sand. It was there behind a vale of drying shredded leaf ends curled around the base of a welwitschia that he noticed something distantly familiar: with black globular apothecia speckling the surface, it resembled a cosmic system (of lichen). Immediately he knew it was a remarkable find. A chance discovery. Without even looking at the spores Hale was certain that this was a new genus.

A specimen of Santessonia namibensis collected from the Skeleton Coast National Park, Namibia, by Mason Hale in 1986. (photo by G. Krupnick)

Before DNA analysis was practical and popular, spores were the main indicator of genetic differentiation among species. Upon returning to the Smithsonian, working at his most enthusiastic as Robinson describes, Hale looked closer: peculiar as well, the double-celled thick walls of the spores were similar to the genus Buellia, though they lacked any other semblance. To describe the species Hale chose a collection made by E. R. Robinson, another significant lichenologist and prolific collector, to make the type. Enlisting Gernot Vobis to help in authoring the new lichen, Hale paid tribute to Swedish lichenologist Rolf Santesson. In 1978 their new species Santessonia namibensis was published in the journal Botaniska Notiser v.131.

Entrenched in Robinson’s storytelling, I wanted to see the type specimen in the lichen-flesh. We hurried down the hall to the cabinets, only to be left unrewarded and puzzled. “I seem to be misleading myself,” Robinson said aloud. “No,” I reassured, “you are misleading both of us.” Certain of his history, Robinson found his (and formerly Hale’s) copy of the 3rd volume of the Index Nominum Genericorum (Plantarum). Near to the back, printed on all of about a centimeter of the page, his story was confirmed: “Santessonia Hale & Vobis, published 1978.” Yet where had the original specimen vanished?

03/07/2019

After three years of production, the Department of Botany is excited to announce that the Botany Digitization Conveyor Belt has reached 2 million scans of botanical specimens this December 2018. This number also coincides with the transcription of 1.5 million conveyor specimen images. Total number of inventoried specimens from the US National Herbarium has now reached over 3 million records, and can be found in our online catalog (https://collections.nmnh.si.edu/search/botany/).

Sarah Evans prepares to scan an herbarium specimen. (Photo by I. Lin)

These landmark figures are the result of very hard work from the Department of Botany and the Smithsonian’s Digitization Program Office staff, in collaboration with the digitization company Picturae. The Botany Conveyor Belt runs five days a week, capturing the images of 3,000-4,000 pressed specimens every day, or one specimen image every 4-6 seconds. Staff are continually preparing, moving, scanning, filing, and repairing botanical specimens for this long-term project.

Euonymus americanus (Celastraceae), just one of the 2 million scanned botanical specimens from the US National Herbarium.

Which plant families can be found in the online catalog? The digitization team has completed a large portion of the dicotyledons, including Asteraceae, Fabaceae, Rubiaceae, Melastomataceae, Acanthaceae, Ericaceae, and many more. The pteridophytes and Cyperaceae are also complete. The team is now working their way through the last third of the dicots, and expect to be 80 percent complete with this group by late spring 2019. The goal is to digitize all pressed specimens in the US National Herbarium within the next three years, funding permitted. Stay tuned for updates in the coming months and years.